medya wasn't the only one waiting for us at the dock
we were greeted by "lead design" who is a very crisp-looking forged made of shiny silver and amethyst crystals
they thanked us for rescuing the salvage team their employers had sent
and then they politely informed us that the chest we'd recovered originally belonged to the brelish military and thus house cannith held claim to it
as far as i'm concerned
if they make the choice to use a valuable resource for hate and war
what's left of it afterward belongs to those of us who make the choice to use it for love and art
or maybe i'm just rationalizing the urge to hoard all that alchemically pure copper because it would go a long way toward completing myself
how about i solemnly promise to use myself for love and art
anyhow bell did the smart thing and arranged for us to meet with lead later on
they handed spark a visiting card but apparently the etiquette is very different here which might just be for the better
and it was more like the engraved printing plate itself than a printed card
what i mean is that the card was a little sheet of metal with lead's name and such engraved in it
i can't tell if that's really stylish or just pretentious
but i like it
we went back to bell's tent but krayg's niece "xena" was there (she's the one that we saved from that forged who went berserk)
she explained that there was tension between houses tharashk and cannith and the excursion we'd just returned from was a fool's errand that would draw us further into it and we were probably best off just burying the chest in the sand somewhere and walking away from the whole mess
once she left we decided to do the next best thing
zer' created a little pocket dimension to stash all the chest's contents in
no i'm not telling where it is because it's hard for me to keep secrets so i'm practicing on this one
we turned over the "found empty" chest to krayg and there was a mutual agreement to not go looking to him for jobs for a while
fine with me i didn't want to waste time and risk my hide for petty political junk to start with
with that task checked off the list i took the opportunity to steer us toward morgrave university so i could at least get started on the one thing i left the everglow for
it wasn't hard to get group consensus so we went there next
and let me tell you
it's a gorgeous campus and it reminded me of my time in academy so i was instantly comfortable there which was a welcome change of pace
ploughshare suggested we look up "leali stormreach"
with the help of the campus map (i have to write about that map later) we found her and i like her a lot already
for one thing she doesn't tower over me like every other biped on this side of the hedge
for another she's friendly and curious and a lot like the ponies i liked best in academy
and the best part is that she already wants us to join her for some field research
she gave us the prospectus and some employment paperwork to fill out so we gathered in the central square of the campus to work through that
sure it'll take us into a cheerful-sounding place named "the mournland" but it gets my hoof in the door at the university so i'll take it
anyhow at some point a passing student mistook me for another pony named "hellebore" and
and
wait
wait aw crabapples i just realized
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaa
what is wrong with me
why didn't i ask more questions
that's just more evidence that there's some other pony wandering around here and i was so focused on paperwork i didn't think to follow up
sorry but it only just occured to me what i missed there
but now i have a name to go on at least so there's that
aaaaaaaaaaa
okay i'm good now where was i
we got those forms filled out as quickly as we could and then zer and spark and bell went to talk with lead design while medya and relic and i found a place to eat
not that relic ate much of course but we talked
after that we were pretty much exhausted and i wanted to get an early night anyhow because there's one big perk of being employed by the university
library access
i'm going to spend so much time there in the two days before we travel